Tag Archives: Survival Game

RV There Yet? – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – While the vibes might not be for everyone, I had a blast playing this with friends as we worked out the perilous path our RV had to negotiate.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for the PC version of the game that was used for the review.

The RV.

RV There Yet? Review Introduction –

Every year, there seems to be a video game genre that bursts out of nowhere and dominates the discourse. In 2025, I would say that one of the best candidates for that would be the Co-op Survival Challenge, where you and your friends have to work together to surmount a challenge while the world is trying to kill you. Working together to climb a mountain, or today’s game, going on a pleasant drive in the back country with a group of friends.

So, to set the scene, after a week of you and your friends boondocking around in Mabutts Valley, it is time for you and your friends to get into your RV and drive home. But, oh no, the road to the 65 interstate has been closed after a tunnel cave-in. This means, to get home, you and your friends will have to take the long way around, which goes deeper into the forest, and where the road becomes more and more perilous with each turn. The only way you can get home is if you work together as a team, oh, and not get mauled by a bear in the process.

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Dune: Awakening – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – This game has usurped my life, even when Harold killed me over and over again …. And over again.  

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

Looking out over the Hagga Basin.

Dune: Awakening Review –

Every now and again, a game captures me in a way that I cannot quite understand. It’s what I think about at work, what I ponder on the bus, and sometimes even what pops up in my dreams. Today I get to do a deep dive into one such game that has taken over my life in the last couple of weeks. For you see, the spice must flow.

So, to set the scene, we have entered the world of Dune, but not the world you might be familiar with. For this is one of Paul Atreides’ spice dreams, where he explores a world of what would have happened if his mother Lady Jessica had been loyal to the Bene Gesserit and had a daughter instead of a son, as they wanted. Thus, House Atreides was not wiped out in the Arrakis coup, and the planet has been thrust into a war between them and House Harkonnen. You play an off-worlder from one of several factions that have found themselves on a slave transport. Your life has minimal promise, that is, until a masked figure shoots down your transport and you find yourself out on the sands of Dune, not prepared for the world you are about to enter.

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PEAK – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – An enjoyable single-player experience that comes alive with a group.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

Looking down to the shore from the PEAK.

Peak Review –

One of the events I find fascinating is Game Jams. These are where developers set themselves a short period, usually a day or two, to see what they can build in that time. Here, time forces you to be creative and many weird and wonderful games, from Goat Simulator to Thomas Was Alone and everything in between, have been spawned. Usually, game jams spawn ideas that later become something grand. Still, I have never seen a game conceptualised in February and then released in June before, which is what we will examine today.

So, to set the scene, you are just a happy little guy going on a flight to a new tropical destination on Bingbong Airlines. But disaster strikes, and your plane crashes into an unknown tropical island. What do you do? Well, Scoutmaster Myers’ Wilderness Handbook Vol. 1 advises in How Not to Die, to run, not walk, and “You’ve gotta get to High Ground”. Looking around, you see a high peak in the distance, so it is time to collect supplies, gird your lions, and start climbing.

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7 Days to Die – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – A game of two halves whose disconnect should not work, but I keep coming back.

Rating: 3 out of 5.
7 Days to Die. Image Credit: The Fun Pimps.

Review – As part of the consequences of 2020 (and one of the few that are not bad) is that I have been playing a lot more multiplayer games with my group of friends. While the go-to games of Civilization and Divinity are there, we have also been branching out into new games, one of which is today’s review, 7 Days to Die. Now, I should preface this review with the fact that this game is still in alpha, which means that it is not feature complete. However, given the first release was in 2013, I think there has been enough time to get a good sense of the game.

So to set the scene, 7 Days to Die is a survival horror game set in a post-World War 3 Arizona where the dead now outnumber the living. The survival part of the genre means that you have to build bases, craft new items, upgrade your stuff so you can access new areas, and then rinse and repeat. The horror part of the title comes from the fact that your central adversary in this game is the walking dead, old bitey, or as you may know them by zombies.

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Video Game Review – Minecraft Nether Update

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TL;DR – It brings life to a forgotten world, giving it a personality, a new direction. It also changes one of the games longest static features for the better.                  

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Minecraft Nether Update. Image Credit: Mojang.

Article –

Last year I took a look back at my time with Minecraft over the previous ten years. In many ways, whether I intended it or not, it was epitaph to my time with the game. Well, that may have been the intent, but reality had a way of changing that because COVID happened and I needed a way to connect with people in isolation and well what’s Realm between close friends. Since diving back into the game, we have our first significant update since the BEEESSSsss, so I wanted to explore as see how it changes the game for better or worse … it is the first one.    

For those who have not played it, Minecraft is a Survival-Sandbox game; there is no traditional narrative to pull you through the game, bar the one you make for yourself. You mine for resources, and then you craft new items that give you access to new resources to mine and thus the circle continues from wood to stone to diamond and now even further. In a regular unmodded game of survival, there are three levels to the game, the Overworld the main world you spawn in, The End with its dragons and its pastel aesthetic, pastels everywhere, and finally The Nether, which is what we are focusing on today.

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Article – My 10 Years With Minecraft.

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TL;DR – I look at the highs and lows of the last 10 years of my Minecraft story, the video game I have probably spent more hours playing than anything else.

Minecraft. Image Credit: Mojang.

Article –

This year is Minecraft’s 10 year anniversary, and if you are like me and can remember when it first came out, well that is one of those numbers that will just make you feel old. In those 10 years, Minecraft has gone from this small Indy darling that you heard about through whispers on the internet to a full-on industry juggernaut. There have been countless videos and tutorials, and while there have been a lot of imitators, nothing has ever reached the heights of the original.

As I thought back through the last 10 years, I had the sudden realisation that I have probably spent more hours in Minecraft than any other game I have played, bar maybe Civilization thankfully Minecraft was never on Steam so there is not a tracker out there with the exact hour count. That was of course then a prompt to get all nostalgic about a simpler time, a time of dirt and cobblestone, and when zombies dropped feathers for some reason.

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